Low-density suburbs can cause social isolation that's harmful for individual and community well-being. But research confirms we can plan neighbourhood centres so they become vibrant social hubs.

Without medium-density housing being built in the established suburbs – the ‘missing middle’ – the goals of more compact, sustainable and equitable cities won’t be achieved.
zstock/shutterstockOctober 25, 2017

Recently published research has found that the concentration of poorer people in hotter places is a real problem for cities' capacity to cope with climate change.

The Western Distributor project announced by the Andrews government will benefit Melbourne’s suburban residents in the west and north, but inner-city elites are mobilising against it.
AAP/Melissa MeehanJuly 21, 2016

It's a project that creates benefits for Melbourne's western suburbs and the state as a whole. But the inner-city elite don't like it and recent experience suggests their opinion holds sway.

Mature gum trees will be important for visual amenity among the higher-density residences being built to house a population growing at 5.1% a year for the next two decades.
AAP/McGregor CoxallMay 23, 2016

Santana Row, located in San Jose, California, is one of many Lifestyle Centers cropping up around the country. Parading themselves as a Main Street from a bygone era, these new retail centers hope to recreate what was lost in the rush to cover America with large malls from the 1950s through the 1990s.
Santana RowMarch 3, 2015

The conventional image of suburbia is one of bland affluence and social homogeneity. Suburbs are where the middle classes aspire to make their nests. They are the idealised safe havens for raising children…